'he retired to rest. When, however, he had much to do, ' he sat later, and his light was seen when all else was wrapped in slumber. He was accessible from morning to 'night to all who wished to speak to him :-what, however, was most oppressive to him was to have his time needlessly taken up. His friends and acquaintances knew this, ' and seldom came to see him, except upon occasion of bu'siness, and then for no longer than was necessary. p. 328. It is mentioned elsewhere, that he was particularly fond of roses, and in the season of them, would always have some standing in water upon his table. Some of the greatest services of Heyne to the University, were those which he rendered as librarian. Shortly after his appointment to Gottingen, he succeeded Michaelis as first librarian, and for the rest of his life exerted himself in every way to increase it, and facilitate its use. He found it at fifty thousand volumes, and left it at two hundred thousand, and the MS. Alphabetical Catalogue, in one hundred folio volumes, was undertaken at his instance, and completed in ten years under his superintendance. A pleasant anecdote is related, in reference to the library, in a little journal of a tour made by Mr. and Mrs. Heyne in the year 1788, written by the latter, and inserted by Mr. Heeren in his work. It was before the library had reached the size at which he left it. At dinner, at Colothurn, a little city in Switzerland, Heyne had, at his right hand, a young 'Benedictine from Constance, the librarian of his monastery. He had, I know not how, discovered that he had a 'colleague for his neighbour, and the conversation naturally ' turned upon their respective libraries, the number of vo'lumes, &c. The good monk seemed quite convinced, ' that no collection could surpass that, of which he had the care. Heyne let him speak on and get animated, till to 'the question how many volumes he had, he answered, with a very well contented air, ten thousand. He asked, ' in his turn, how many volumes there were in the Gottingen library, and Heyne modestly replied, one hundred and thirty thousand. It was too much for the good Benedic• tine. So shocked was he at the answer, which he took for mere rhodomontade, that he threw down his knife and fork, and left the table." p. 355. Our limits do not admit of our abstracting from this very entertaining volume a more minute account of the labours of Heyne, as a publick teacher of ancient literature, or in his other capacities of Secretary to the Royal Society, to which he presented yearly at least one memoir, and Editor of the Literary Journal, in which he wrote about eight thousand articles. Of his labours as a critick, our readers are able to form their own opinion. Of his Tibullus and Virgil, his Pindar and his Homer, who does not know the fame? and who that has read them does not know their merit? Tibullus was his favourite among the Latin poets, and he seems to have laboured, con amore, upon the three successive editions of his works which he published. He also communicated what further occurred to him, after the last edition, to Mr. since Professor Wunderlich, of Gottingen, who published a new edition. The Tibullus of Heyne has been called the best edited of the Latin Classicks. Et qui, says Villers, oserait encore toucher à Virgile, après la dernière édition en 4 vol. qu'a donnée du sien, à Leipsick l'illustre Mr. Heyne, et ou ce grand critique a retouché pour la dernière fois son ouvrage ? No one will feel dissatisfied with the question, who has availed himself of the ample collection of every thing necessary to the illustration of Virgil, which this edition contains, clothed as it is in an eloquent and beautiful latinity, and disposed with admirable discretion and taste. The edition of Pindar was occasioned by the following circumstance. Being requested by some of the students to read a private course to them upon this difficult author, it was found that the want of manuals would be the first difficulty. He accordingly undertook the task of publishing an edition, of which the Latin version was prepared by Koppe, a young man formed in his school, and afterwards connected with his family. This edition appeared in 1773; and a volume of additamenta followed in 1791, containing a further selection of various readings. In 1798, however, he presented the world with his second edition, containing what may be called a complete Pindarick apparatus. An Epistle of Herman, upon the metres of Pindar is given in the last volume, and the excellent indices were contributed by Fiorillo, now professor in the philosophical faculty at Gottingen. If the preference be given in some respects to the subsequent edition of Boekh, that of Heyne will ever deserve the praise of having been the first, to make Pindar accessible to the generality of scholars. If the opinion of criticks is as yet undecided, upon all the questions, connected with Heyne's edition of Homer, there is still a praise, and that of the highest kind, which will not be withholden. While the current notes, beneath the text, reduce Homer to the level of every one who is willing to read him, the collections in the subsequent volumes present the student, with all the materials, for a minute familiarity with all that concerns the illustration of the Iliad, in its present state. That these collections are too minute and laborious, and border too much upon the unrelenting eradition of the school, which Heyne elsewhere did so much to supersede, is, perhaps, the only objection that will be made to them. Opinions are yet divided upon the value of the diganima, which is applied throughout in the margin; but, standing as it does there, it is no disturbance of the ordinary text, and at worst can be regarded only as a superfluity-of the controversy, with respect to the authenticity of Homer, not much has been heard beyond the limits of the European continent. In 1795, Frederic Augustus Wolf, for a short time a pupil of Heyne at Gottingen, then professor at Jena, and now at Berlin, published an edition of Homer, containing a revision of the text, in which he availed himself of Villoison's neat edition of the Venetian MS. with Scholia, but particularly accompanied with prolegomena, in which he called in question the authenticity of the poems, and maintained, that instead of having been written at the period usually assigned, and by Homer, or by any other single person, they were gradually formed, by successive collections, and recensions of separate poems, handed down by tradition, and first committed to writing, in the age of Solon. The first volume of the Prolegomena, containing chiefly the external evidence, is all that has yet appeared.-This edition of Homer, and the prolegomena in particular, was reviewed by Heyne in the Gottingen Literary Journal, and in a manner perhaps it will be thought not quite worthy either of the subject, the author, or the reviewer. The review was short, cursory, and superficial; and it spoke civilly of the merits of the edition, as an application of Villoison's edition to the criticism of the text. So far from entering at all into the merits of the great question, started in the prolegomena, Heyne remarks, en passant, that the author appears to regard the suggestion, that Homer was not the author of the poems as they stand, as original; but that he himself had always held this opinion. He complains also of Mr. Wolf, for not having communicated his design of publishing an edition, and intimates a sort of interference with his own. Not long after he read to the Royal Society at Gottingen, a memoir de antiquâ Homeri lectione indaganda, dijudicanda et restituenda, of which he gave an account in the Literary Journal, and in which he advances quite the same system as Wolf, with the addition that he had always held it. As Wolf had attended his lectures upon Homer at Gottingen, he considered the implication to be unavoidable, that he had borrowed his system, or the suggestion of it, from Heyne, and in a series of five letters, written with no small acerbity, upon the occasion, he maintains the originality of his speculations, so far as regarded Heyne; and, by the quotation of passages from the works of the latter, would prove that Heyne, notwithstanding his repeated assertions, could not, and did not, entertain the same or similar views. The literary world has in some degree sanctioned the assertions of Wolf, by setting down Heyne as the leader of an opposite school, though one who should compare the prolegomena of the former, with the abovementioned memoir of the latter, might find it difficult to discover the ground of the distinction. When Heyne's edition of Homer, some years after, appeared, one portion of the republick of letters was arrayed by anticipation against it, and the usual exasperations incident to such controversies, have produced in Germany, a radical, perhaps lasting, division of opinion on the merits of the work. Various circumstances have contributed to prevent the labours of Wolf from finding favour, in England or here. Few understand, and fewer adopt his system. As far as it has been known, it has been associated with the similar system, which has been applied by the German divines of the New School to the Old and New Testament, and of which the rumour has been heard with horrour, in the English and American church. Meantime Heyne's edition of the Iliad has received the title of Optima, and is seldom mentioned but with the regret that his labours had not extended to the Odyssey. He had made collections for an edition of the Odyssey, part of which were communicated, says Mr. Heeren, to one of the learned; in whose hands they will not be lost, and a part, we understand, are deposited in the University Library at Gottingen. Heyne's private life, till he reached the meridian of his days, was full of troubles. The sketch of his early history, already given, acquaints us with the severity of his fortune, till his appointment to Gottingen; and the death of several of his children, and of his first wife, in the year 1775, were new and successive appeals to his sensibility. From the period, however, of his second marriage, in 1777, with the daughter of the Elder Brander, one of the Hanoverian ministry, and a man of letters, his life seems to have been passed in comparative tranquillity and peace. He received very many invitations to different situations at Cassel, Dresden, Copenhagen, &c. some of which were highly lucrative and honourable, but he refused them all. He had promised to the minister Munchausen, when that singular man was upon his death bed, that he would never leave Gottingen. And at each successive invitation elsewhere, he usually received an accession to his salary. health, in latter life, was uncommonly good, and his activity continued to the last. In 1803, when he was about the age of 70, he shared with his colleagues in the fear, that was felt for the University, under the administration of the French. It was determined to address the first consul, upon the subject, and to commend the University to his protection. A letter was accordingly written to him, by M. Martens, prorector of the University, and by Heyne its oldest member, and correspondent of the National Institute. The following answer was sent to Heyne. His Paris, le 21 Prarial, an XI. de la Le Ministre de la Guerre à Mr. Heyne, Membre de l'Université de Le Premier Consul, Monsieur, sçait apprecier les services, que Agreez l'assurance de la considération AL. BERTHIER. |
